And Film Theory

KRACAUER

WE LITERALLY REDEEM THIS WORLD FROM ITS DORMANT STATE, ITS STATE OF VIRTUAL NONEXISTENCE, BY ENDEAVORING TO EXPERIENCE IT THROUGH THE CAMERA. . . .

GERMAN EXPRESSIONISMArt movement early 20th Century

Expressionisms before WWI but

German Expressionism,

Neue Sachlichkeit, only thereafter

widespread and accepted

German Film 1920

Realities of the post-war era &

Universum Film AG - UFA

symbolism vs. Hollywood financial superiority

WWI• 1914 - 1918

• Mainly fought in Europe

• App. 70 mil. Soldiers / 60 mil. Europeans

• 1st: Aerial warfare / poison gas / submarines

• No Man’s Land - Western Front Trenches 500 miles

GERMANY AND FILM AFTER WWI• Maps redrawn - collapse and fragmentation of the Austro-Hungarian, Russian,

Ottoman and German empires

• High reparitions, leaving nations financially devastated

• Film pre-war: W Eu 80% of need, after 7%

• Urban Decay

• Migration into the cities

• Mangled veteran bodies lining the streets

• Sex murders

• Depression

• Loss of Innocence

• Complete rejection of past

• Financial Dependency

• Loss of ‘National Community’

THE CITY – 1916, GEORGE GROSZ

ROBERT WIENE (1873-1938)

KARACAUER: ALL FANTASY MUST BE ROOTED IN REALITY

• The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) is Wiene’s most

• famous directorial effort and is clearly associated

• with German Expressionism with its distorted angles

• and use of shadows.

• Many consider it the first “Film” of the movement

DISTINCTIONS BETWEEN "FORMATIVE”-TOP-TO-BOTTOM / DEDUCTIVE

AND "REALIST" TENDENCIES IN FILM-BOTTOM-TO-TOP/INDUCTIVE

KRACAUER…• Praises the rawness of realist approaches to film

• Film creates a vision of reality that allows perceiving it without being drawn into it

• A film is "cinematic" if it acknowledges its capacity to record and reveal physical reality

• Physical reality presents the material from which film is created

• Inception

• “All these creative efforts are in keeping with the cinematic approach as long as they benefit, in some way or other, the medium's substantive concern with our visible world.“ (39)

• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

MOVEMENT IN FILM• Chase

• Fifth Element

• Dance

• Black Swan

• Nascent

• American Beauty

• Goodfellas

INHERENT AFFINITIES • A. The unstaged ("the beauty of the wind in the trees"; actuality in life or its illusion on film)

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• B. The fortuitous ("haphazard contingencies", the street, the accidental)

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• C. Endlessness (the frame, or boundary, only a "provisional limit"; the frame's content refers to other contents outside the frame)

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• D. The indeterminate (each picture surrounded with a fringe "of indistinct multiple meanings," "unshaped nature", or nature "in its inscrutability"; the term "psychophysical correspondences" embraces the fluid interrelations between the physical world and the psychological dimension)

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• E. The flow of life (unique to cinema, the duration of time and the influx of material situations and happenings). Due to the influx of psychophysical correspondences aroused, films can suggest a reality that can be called "life." In film the flow of life is simply the stream of material situations and happenings and all that they imitate in terms of emotions, values, and thoughts. Kracauer cites the street as one of the screen's most eminent attractions.

TO INCORPORATE INTO YOUR ASSIGNMENT 1- DUE MONDAY, JUNE 25, VIA EMAIL @11 A.M.• Kracauer writes that cinema has the ability to reveal certain aspects of our world to us, including:

• Things normally unseen: The Small and the Big, The Transient

• Blind spots of the mind: Unconventional Complexes, The Refuse, The Familiar

• Phenomena Overwhelming Consciousness

• Special Modes of Reality

• Define one of these categories and offer an example from a post-2000 film or TV series you have recently seen via link to a website-video

• Create a short narrative, no more then 10 still images (you may take those from the web) that make use of TWO of the categories. Send in a slideshow format, copied onto a word document, edited into a video (e.g. on youtube) or numbered so I have the correct order.

• Example: Frog and the Scorpion

WONDERFALLS• This series, cancelled mid-season but since a cult-hit, makes use of many of the inherent

affinities and basic concepts as laid out in Kracauer, all the while firmly rooted in the realm of the fantastical… or inner-world.

• For our discussion note instances where you find such examples.